High art gets the emoji treatment in Emojinal Art

3. What is the verbal translation for two fish flags flying on the same pole?

4. If eskimos have 50 words for snow (or something), what does it say about our culture that we’ve got, like 15 different emoji for crying?

5. Emoji originated in Japan in 1998 — is everything OK over there, Japan? Are you feeling all right? Do you need me to call your mother? (I’m worried about Japan, you guys).

6. What is the proper context for sending someone a tiny picture of flying money or an arrow with “soon” written over it?

7. Why do I feel so old all of the sudden?

My first exposure to emoji came when my college roommate brought home his Taiwanese girlfriend and her friends, a large group of Asian international students that not only used emoji but, over time, adopted new physical facial expressions that mirrored oft-used emoji.

They used emoji as another language, communicating entire sentences using these tiny, overly enthusiastic symbols. These days, emoji are just another part of how we communicate with each other. Am I the only one who gets nervous when a tiny cat with heart-shaped eyes pops up during a business conversation?

Despite their excessive cutesiness, it’s hard to argue against the idea of using pictures to communicate — there are obvious applications for such a mode of expression.

Maybe I just haven’t found the right emoji for me. Where’s the tiny symbol for hangover? Or feeder road? Or “I got stuck at that God-forsaken train at MLK, see you never”?

Clearly the answer to my emoji bafflement is more emoji — let them rain down from the heavens like confusing raindrops. We’ll swim in a sea of smiley faces with unsettling teeth, we’ll bury our dead in piles of tiny cartoon cats.

The blog Emojinal Art has found a way to put our emoji surplus to work by updating classic artwork with a little, uh, added flair.

This is cute and all, but I’m really not looking forward to the inevitable emoji pornography that, let’s face it, probably already exists somewhere in a dark corner of the Internet.